If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to OCF! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

MaxPC's comment on CoreTemp reading?!

anyone read this month's issue of MaxPC's comment of CoreTemp reading for a Quad core??

in my case, I see my Quad's reading from BIOS/mobo/utility that read as BIOS @ low 40C to CoreTemp's low 60C under full load!!

any comment?? Coolest??

Fire up your favorite temperature-monitoring program on a Core 2 processor and I'll bet the reading you get is wrong. At least that's the conclusion I've come to after a confusing week of trying to figure out which temp utility is accurate.

There are 2 different temperature measurements going on inside a Core 2. Each individual core has it's own digital thermal sensor (DTS) that writes a value to a register in the core. The number the DTS reports; however, is not the temperature of the core, it is a value that coutns down to zero. When it hits zero, the core should throttle down. It's also intended to be used for controlling fan speeds, not as a direct temperature reference. CoreTemp is guessing (incorrectly, according to Intel) what the offset is.

There's also an old-fashioned thermal diode inside the CPU, just off to the side of the two processors, under the lid. Intel says the temperature the diode reports is probably more indicative of the CPU's actual temperature (and it's probably what the BIOS and most OEM motherboard utilities report). Still, that number isn't necessarily correct.

Believe it or not, to accurately measure the temperature of a Core 2 chip, Intel recommends tha tyou mill out a groove in the heat spreader and install a thermal couple at the exact center of the heat spreader. If I did this, I would probably see that the CPU is nowhere near the maximum temperature - 65C - that Intel rates it for. Ther moral of this story? Take your temp utility readings with a grain of salt.

I have always felt the same way, but have always used coretemp because it gives me the highest temperatures just to be on the safe side. Now if someone could just come out with something that actually works.

Sure is confusing on my quad bios says -3c core temp says 13c speedfan says -9c tat says 8c and asus probe says 246c you would think that as they make the chips they would have an accurate way of measuring its temperature.